BY TAYLOR BENNETT, COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT POLICY COORDINATOR, THE HUB

How does the sale of property tax debt impact everyday life in West Virginia’s communities? A new report aims to find out.

As part of our work with the Abandoned Properties Coalition, The Hub and our partners at the Huntington Urban Renewal Authority, the Northern WV Brownfields Assistance Center, and the WVU Land Use and Sustainable Development Law Clinic have been working with the national nonprofit Center for Community Progress to examine how the process surrounding unpaid, or delinquent, property taxes leads to a high volume of vacant and abandoned real estate across WV communities.

The presence of these properties in our cities and towns causes a negative ripple effect that touches everything from efforts to grow our local economies to the health and well-being of WV’s residents.

This research is much more than just a report – it provides a roadmap for reimagining the currently very complicated property tax sale process to be more effective for taxpayers, county government officials, and the state of West Virginia at large.

See What WVians are Saying

Earlier this year, the team at The Hub asked residents to share stories of how vacant, abandoned, and dilapidated buildings affect their lives and communities as part of this research. A complete accounting of responses will be included in the final report, but you can catch a glimpse of what we found out in this post on our blog.

We thank the team at the Center for Community Progress, and their pivotal Technical Assistance Scholarship Program, for making the creation of this report possible.

Comments

If you add the cost of insurance on the flood plain you have created the perfect storm that is destroying Wheeling Island, one of the largest inland islands in the USA and once the Jewel of the City of Wheeling.

By submitting this form, you are granting: The West Virginia Community Development Hub, 103 Adams Street, Fairmont, West Virginia, 26554, United States, http://wvhub.org permission to email you. You may unsubscribe via the link found at the bottom of every email. (See our Email Privacy Policy for details.) Emails are serviced by Constant Contact.